


Before There Was Myth

by naughtypixie



Series: Before There Was Myth [1]
Category: Highlander: The Series, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Ancients, But also kind of were good guys, Gen, Highlander Immortals, Human Experimentation, Immortals, Janus was a little crazy, Murder, Origin Story, TV science, The Ancients were not nice people, creator race does as it wills, disturbing content but not graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 12:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14894258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naughtypixie/pseuds/naughtypixie
Summary: No one knows how the Immortals came to be…In the Watcher Chronicles it states that:“"One chronicle suggests they were part of an ancient civilisation prior to the Ice Age. If we contrast this account with the likes of Plato's Atlantis, this seems a plausible account."
Another chronicle suggests this ancient civilisation began on another planet, known as Zeist.”But All Myth had an origin once.





	Before There Was Myth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teland/gifts).



> Thank you to Te for betaing! You are amazing as always!  
> Sorry for the TV Science!!

Janus is out of time. 

The others don't understand why he keeps trying. The others keep telling him to stop. They have gone so far as to forbid his research! He sets up a secret lab and ignores them all. 

All they care about is running anyway. 

===

He is so close. 

He knows he should be wary – the last two experiments came out abominations and he was forced to put them down. He almost couldn’t. 

But if he can just get the ratio of Iratus to Alteran DNA to stabilize – 

He fails again, and this time the creature shrieks in a sound far too reminiscent of the Wraith for his liking. 

He loses weeks of sleep. But he doesn’t give up. 

===  


The key is the healing. 

Janus knows this. Knows that if he could just perfect the balance he could give his people a chance against the Wraith. Against the Replicators. Against their former kin, the Ori. So many enemies when all they had wanted was to – 

Some days he misses Zeist so much it is a physical _ache_. He wishes -- not for the first time -- that it was the Ori that chose to leave their galaxy and their planet, their _home_ , so long ago. He wishes -- 

Janus pauses, staring at the last failed attempt. 

The Replicators. Maybe – 

===

It seems to work. 

He is excited, but he tempers himself, and focuses even more. 

He has to be careful or the others will notice his absence. 

Perhaps it is time for another visit to the Sanctuary. Shame that it is back in Pegasus and he never told anyone how to get out. 

He needs more _time_ , but the plague keeps spreading. 

===

The plague is across the whole planet now. 

The Ori’s Priors are as fanatical as their masters and, while Janus has no proof, he knows in his bones that it has to be their doing. 

There is no cure. 

He works faster. 

===

It worked! It actually worked! 

The plague cannot be beaten – it mutates too fast - but the new sample cannot contract it. The combination of Iratus, Wraith and Replicator, inserted and balanced inside the Alteran genome, seems to be self-healing no matter what Janus throws at it. 

He watches the Shea dish he has his samples in arc with lighting, and, moments later the plague DNA he had deposited is gone. 

Is it truly that simple? 

He has to make a living sample to be sure. 

====

The… creature – 

Janus doesn’t want to call it a baby because – because –

The creature seems stable. Like any Alteran infant.

Janus checks its hands repeatedly. No feeding slit. No cold blood or mating sac or – 

When he cuts the creature's finger, it cries, like any other infant, but the wound heals immediately.

Janus is afraid to breathe. 

====

It is too cruel. The thing that is a baby doesn’t age. It looks at him with intelligent eyes, but is unable to speak or move on its own more than to flail its chubby limbs. 

It has been 2 years and the thing has not grown a centimeter. 

Janus wants to give up. 

He truly does.

Instead he goes to terminate the subject and put it out of its misery.

===

The creature – baby – cannot be killed. 

Janus is beyond despair. He has tried a dozen ways to end it. Humanely. 

It won’t die. 

But it hurts. It hurts and it cries and it looks at him with betrayal in its eyes and Janus hurts for the lost opportunity. 

He disintegrates it in the end. Faster and with no pain. 

At least it’s at peace now. 

He honestly debates shutting the project down. 

The others suspect him, but he plants a dozen false trails for them to follow. They find some of his old work and attempt to lock it up or destroy it.  
He doesn’t care. 

He needs this to work. 

===

He goes to a planet with no life and names it Argos. 

He takes the DNA of some of the local humanoids from his planet and combines it with Alteran DNA. He then alters it so that he can watch the evolution of his samples in a much shorter time.

He gives them fifty days.

That should be enough, he thinks. 

At first, it is a success. The children born grow up quickly, but continue to age at an accelerated pace, and die shortly after. 

They also go mad with grief.

They also don’t heal at all. 

Something isn’t right. 

He went too far the other way. 

He needs another method to observe, he thinks. 

===

He creates a device that allows him to put the populations to sleep at sundown, stopping the aging process temporarily. 

This buys him more time. 

Fifty stretches to a hundred. 

He tells them his name is Pelops, and that they are the chosen, to live in pure bliss for all of their days. He gives them all they would ever need in their short lives. 

His experiments grow more successful, but they are still dying of aging. He doesn’t understand. The baby couldn’t age, and the Argosians can’t seem to become immortal. 

Until one of them ventures too far out of the village, violating his laws, and somehow manages to fall to his death. 

Janus wants to be angry, but -- 

The youth revives, and Janus feels a sense of kin skid across his senses. 

This youth has activated the Alteran genome inside himself. The Replicator programing kicks in and winds tightly inside the Iratus DNA, healing the youth of all his wounds. 

Janus stuns him, takes him back to his lab on Terra, and dissects him. He keeps the youth sedated, of course. He wouldn’t want him to suffer unduly. 

===

It seems true death only occurs when the synapses connecting to the Iratus DNA cluster in the _neck_ of all places is severed.  
Janus feels hope for the first time in a century.

His experiment is a success. He extends their memory, so that they will not have the failings of ordinary mortals and forget their long lives. He also notes that the DNA altering has made traditional procreation impossible, which is a failing, but one ultimately for the best. He doesn't want them to eradicate the regular Terrans, after all.

Their planet has already had an incident where one kind of ape drove another to extinction.

That would never do. 

Now to build the maturation chambers where the others won’t find them. 

He honestly cares about the people of Terra -- sees them as the children of Alterans, and, in a way, their legacy. Young and stupid, like all children, but _theirs_. He knows a lot of the others have mated with some of the Terrans in secret and left their DNA in the population. He isn’t willing to watch Pegasus repeat itself, or everything that had gone wrong with the Ori.

The plague is still there and killing killing killing, and his Kin plan to just – leave. 

_Again_! 

Janus is tired of running. Especially from the inferior. 

He will make sure these children never need to run from anything. 

That makes him pause. 

Perhaps… he should put in a fail-safe? 

A myth…. Purely for population control, so that the lesser Terrans don’t become subjugated to the Immortal ones. 

Maybe something about a prize if they ‘behave well’? 

He will think on it. 

====

He puts the maturation chambers under the Antarctic base. 

He knows it is a risk, but, buried as deep as they are and powered by no less than ten ZPMs -- which switch out once one is depleted -- he thinks he finally has a way to save this world.

It is so far down into the mantle of the planet that even his own people cannot detect it. 

He programs it to create 150 children every 50 years. He hopes it will be enough. They cannot reproduce, but then, they do not need to. They need only survive. 

He debates putting some kind of genetic memory into the children. 

He debates this a long, long time, but, in the end, he decides that their fate is their own, and only leaves them with a genetic ability to read Alteran.  
He doesn’t want a repeat of those parasites. He shudders to think what they could do with immortal hosts. 

To prevent that, he increases the healing factor, an aggressive eradication of all foreign bodies inside the children. No symbiote would survive a blending with an immortal, he makes sure. 

He does, however scatter lore across the globe in caves and wall writings. Things more likely to survive the ravages of time. He tries: 

Caution about not dominating the lesser, but leading them, protecting. 

A great prize for the well-behaved. 

Cautions on how to kill their own kind. In case one goes evil like the Ori. 

There can be only one race! He must let them know they are all one. All the Children of the Ancients. **_There can be only one_** , and not multiple peoples. 

He makes sure to also make Sanctuaries, places of meditation, in case his progeny wishes to evolve like their parents. He calls it Holy Ground and forbids violence, punishable by true death. 

He tells them they are the children of Atlantis. The Children of the First Ones. Of the Ancients. 

So they have a legacy. 

He fears time. 

Time distorts all messages -- but he has to try. 

He doesn’t teach them about the Stargates however. Just in case they do turn out monstrous. 

Janus makes sure that the child looks like any other mortal baby, so it will not be rejected by the ordinary Terrans. It will only be when the plague kills everyone, and the hopefully-grown child dies its first death, that it will cease to age.

He worries what will happen if they die too young. He wants to fix that but he is out of time. The others are ready to leave and he must go with them.  


All he has is hope. 

===

He waits until the last possible moment, and activates the maturation chamber. 

Once the baby is fully formed, it will be wrapped in swaddling, and beamed to a random location on dry land, near a population of people. The AI knows his parameters and the random nature will insure the immortals will not run into one another, thereby giving them a chance at a family. 

Nonetheless, he is so very glad they will be able to sense one another. 

Immortality without companionship… without kin, that would be a fate worse than death, he thinks. 

He makes them a permanent Sanctuary, one only for them and only visible by them, that draws them to it. Give them time to grow, but give them a tribe also, he thinks. He names the place Zeist in honor of their lost home, allowing nostalgia to rule him for just a moment.

He makes sure to stock it well with ZPMs, well-shielded on a nice little island that doesn’t show signs of drifting too much, and even includes an ascension-assistance device, similar to the one he left back in Pegasus. 

This one, he fixes to give the user more time to ascend. 

Far too many of his brethren died because he rushed the process and the mind could not keep up.

He names the device the Source and leaves an AI hard-light Guardian watching it, to be replaced by a real Immortal who is worthy when the time comes. He thinks it will help them reach enlightenment in no more than a few thousand years and his heart feels full with hope. 

He sends up a prayer to the Creators that none of his people believe in anymore, and have since become, and activates the machines. 

===

Anu - the lightning child - is a beautiful blue-eyed, dark-haired baby with a healthy cry and dusky skin. 

Her barren parents are so very grateful to have found her just beyond their settlement on the savannah, despite her unusual coloring. They love her as their own.

===

The year is CA 13,200, and Janus’s time machine has done its job.


End file.
